The Hobby and the economy

Was in one LFS Sunday and their stock looked like it was down well over 50% since my previous visit there. Was in another LFS today and the stock looked like it was down 50% and I could tell the guy was hurting. He had that look like "please buy something".

Marine tanks cost bucks and it is an expensive hobby. I think the tanking economy (pun intended) has had its effect. No doubt, tank snobs will become even more annoying: "what do you mean you don't have a $600 chiller?! what's the matter with you!?"

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Folks are worried about the economy and the the climbing cost of fuel aint helpping.Plus the first thing people stop spending on,is a hobby.
Were seeing it here,LFS's going all day for a 50 dollar sale.That's not even a 1/4 of the overhead for opening the doors.
Its a scary time for the working man(women too before I get flogged),And I'm afraid its just gonna get worse.

here in st. louis are we have had a lot of local reefers getting out of hobby this summer, everything from high energy bills to losing jobs the whole bit. Most lfs around also have had low stock not ordering much either.

The smart LFS stores keep their licenses paid up to date and operate as much as they can from their homes/garages. They have relationships built up with clients and suppliers both. Just the amount of money that can be made supplying corals and fish on special orders and palleted items such as sand and salt will keep their suppliers dealing with them and provide a service to their valued customers and give them a foot in the door when they are able to open another store, and possibly even pay all their bills at home whemn not paying store renatl and wages etc. Then there is the fact that rich people will gladly pay to have nice reef tanks in their homes and offices if it requires absolutely no work by them or their families or regualr employees. There are many LFS store owners that went out of business due to economy down swings that have set up businesses that install and maintain tanks for the wealthy. The only difference now is that the economy swing is pretty much nationwide instead of regional or in a city or town. Lots more stores going to be closing at one time, not since the depression as anything effected the economy like energy coasts is now doing. I would still rather do business with a LFS store owner who had to close his/her store than a national chain store or an online store.

almost always i use a lfs over the large store. i usually find what i want on the net and take it to the lfs and have them get it for me. i was even told once that he could not compete with the online stores for price but i dont really care as long as i get treated good as soon as i am treated like a number i will take my business elsewere.

I knowhow you feel. I have no LFS store to go to anymore, just a Petco, so I am forced to do a lot of business on line. I am presently fighting with Marine Depot at this time. They offer priority mail shipping to Alaska, instead of UPS ground. However, they typically only take the packages to the post office once a week. I informed them that two Drs. and the other suppliers/retailers I deal with always take thr packages to the post office daily, and that Priority mail to Alasak is comparable to UPS second day air when the shipment is not held for up to a week at their warehouse. They say it is a matter of economics, and I said when you take several thousand dollars out of my bank account and draw interest on it for days while it sits in your warehouse that is basically theft, not a matter of economics. They do not make the decision on the amount of value of the shipment, they just have a blind policy of just going when a full load accumalates or a period of days goes bye since they went to the post office, no set length of time just whatever makes them happy at the time. That is poor management. They prefer to ship by UPS and Fedex because Fedex and UPS pickup the pacakges from them, make special shipping promotional deals with them and supply packaging materials and even labels and scales. The USPS provides nothing special and you must deliver to them for shipping at commercial rates.
I think I will start buying my sand by the ton. Anyone that really wants thename of where to buy aragonite by the ton just PM me. I can get all the aragonite sand I want at 21 cents per pound by the 1 ton pallet bag, and with shipping that would mean I would be paying $1.10 per pound versus $2.18 per pound from Marine depot buying it at a minimum of 300 pounds at a time. I think I might just have to tell Marine Depot to kiss off.

I definitely have seen a change in my own buying behavior for my tank in the last several months. I used to treat myself to one or two new things (fish or coral) every month, and I budgeted money for that. With the rising cost of gas and food and EVERYTHING, I have not spent money on any livestock in months (with the exception of Jill the vlamingi, who was a good deal). The only money I am spending on my tank is maintenance, like fish food, calcium, salt, etc. I just can't afford it right now.

There is one upside I see to all this. While people may not have the funds to run out and make several purchases, they *may* be more likely to plan out their purchases better and take their time stocking their tanks. If a $60 coral that didn't survive a year ago hurt the budget just imagine how it would feel now. It sure gives me incentive not to stock too quickly. Maybe I'm just the optimist.

And as far as purchasing from the LFS goes, as I have said before, your not just purchasing the product as you do on the Internet. You are purchasing the service that comes with it as well as the ability to bring back something that causes problems in your tank (such as fish that don't get along with their tank mates).

Were just 10 cents behind y'all James.
This time last year,I could fill my truck for 20 bucks,now 20 just gives me a little under 1/2 a tank.But like Biff said,its not just the fuel prices thats going up.Its everything except the wages.
I'm afraid that if something aint done soon,this country will be right back in a depression.Then were all screwed.

Not for a while though... That oil still needs to be processed and refined, it will be a long time before we see any price dips in this country.

The bottom line is that oil is a nonrenewable resource and we are extracting and using more than we are discovering. Demand is increasing while supply is decreasing. Oil will never be cheap again as it takes millions of years to be created and we use it up too quickly. It's just going to get more and more expensive every year.

And these price increases affect everything... If I buy the same stuff at the grocery store as I used to, I'm paying one and a half times what I used to pay for the same food items.

well starting in july Saudi Arabia will put out an additional 200,000 barrels of oil a day which will up the supply and then help bring gas down a bit

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If oil is in such short supply,then why are the oil companies recording record profits?
I have no doubt that the supplies are dwendling,Theres only so many fossiles in the ground after all.But I think that the oil companies saw that the american public would keep buying gas no matter what.So they keep gouging us,and will continue to do so untill something is done about it.
Just my :twocents:

why do we not drill in alaska they have found oil there but enviromentilsts just fight it jut like when my brother in law worked in a gold mine in nevada they always had them knocking at the door trying to stop them but they use the stuph just as much as every one else or they would not have their cars phones or big tv's and computers. something needs to be done but i think that our government will just let it get brushed under the carpet and then we suffer. its not like it takes a bi chunck out of their pockets. i wish that i could make the money that the press and senaters do.

If oil is in such short supply,then why are the oil companies recording record profits?
I have no doubt that the supplies are dwendling,Theres only so many fossiles in the ground after all.But I think that the oil companies saw that the american public would keep buying gas no matter what.So they keep gouging us,and will continue to do so untill something is done about it.
Just my :twocents:

In the year 2000 Americans took 9.4 billion trips on public transportation, an increase of 3.5% from 1999. But in 1946 Americans recorded 23.4 billion trips which is still unsurpassed even though the population was only half of what it is today. What happened to account for the decline of public transit, which is safer, more efficient, less polluting, and reduces highway congestion, while stimulating nearby economic development?The major answer to this question is the long-standing opposition of The Highway Lobby -- the auto, oil, tire and cement industries. You don't hear much these days about "The Highway Lobby" as such. The reason is that it has done its destructive job which is to make America an occasion for ribbons of crowded highways carrying millions of motor vehicles as the only "practical and direct" way to get around on the ground.At times the lobby has to resort to crime to achieve its assaults on public transit, while at other periods, it just used its money, muscle and propaganda with state and Washington lawmakers. Twenty eight crimes were committed by General Motors and its oil and tire company co-conspirators in the Thirties and Forties leading to their convictions in federal district court in Chicago during the late Forties. The U.S. Justice Department's charge, upheld in court, was that these large companies, in order to eliminate their major rivals -- the trolley industry -- bought up these firms, tore up the tracks in and around 28 major cities in the U.S., including the biggest one in Los Angeles, and lobbied legislators to build more and more highways to sell more and more vehicles, gasoline and tires. Earlier, GM tried to pressure banks to reduce credit to these trolley companies and when that did not succeed sufficiently, the conspiracy to buy out their competitors and shut them down was hatched.This is more than corporate crime history. Everyday, today, tomorrow and the next day, millions of Americans find themselves on clogged, bumper to bumper commutes because there is no convenient mass transit or no mass transit at all where they live and work.Lots of people have little or no idea of all the flexible and super-modern modes of public transit that reach all the way toward something called "personal public transit" which would allow you and fellow passengers to call up a monorail car to take you to your destination in some future resurgence of public transit technology.First, change must replace the dominant highway lobby imagery with sleek public transit imagery. For example, have you ever seen a television advertisement for a new car stuck in congested traffic? By contrast, have you ever seen an ad for public transit showing people zooming to work in a modern transit train, while they were snoozing, chatting or reading the newspaper, and racing ahead of a parallel highway clogged with trucks, vans and cars moving in slow motion? Fifty years of this bias and it is not surprising how low are the public's expectations.

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Now, guess who let GM and it's subsidiaries buy up all the trolly tracks......

Hint: Not the Democrats. :shock:

Bush and Company have done more harm to this nation than any administration in history. We'll never see gas prices under $3/g again. I remember in 1998 I was paying around $1.30/g for gasoline and diesel fuel was CHEAPER than that. As it should be. All this needless and created instability in the middle East has done nothing good for the people of this country or the people of the region. It's lined the pockets of rich people though.

I'll shut up now and go smoke a bowl. I'm about to flip out of my chair just thinking about it. issedof:

why do we not drill in alaska they have found oil there but enviromentilsts just fight it jut like when my brother in law worked in a gold mine in nevada they always had them knocking at the door trying to stop them but they use the stuph just as much as every one else or they would not have their cars phones or big tv's and computers. something needs to be done but i think that our government will just let it get brushed under the carpet and then we suffer. its not like it takes a bi chunck out of their pockets. i wish that i could make the money that the press and senaters do.

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I'll tell you EXACTLY why we're not drilling in Alaska or off our coasts.

And I'll tell you EXACTLY why the environmentalists are yelling and screaming about it.
Because you can't trust the gawd damned corporations to drill for oil or dig for gold without ruining all of mother nature for 100 miles around.

These rotten corporate pigs care NOTHING for the environment. They rape and pillage the land and leave it a mess for the TAXPAYERS to clean up. Using my tax dollars to clean up the awful mess after Exxon drills and makes hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars in profit and runs off -- well, that pisses me off.

If the damned government would REGULATE these companies and actually make THEM pay the bill to clean up the mess--you bet your sweet ass they'd figure out a way to do it cleaner. Cheaper to do it cleaner up front than make a mess and clean it up later.

But our worthless politicians won't get tough and enact any laws or regulations requiring these unscrupulous companies to wipe up after themselves. So, the burden is left to the environmental lobby.

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